Neuauser

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Alice Neuhauser

President and CFO

Carolco Pictures/Flesch & Neuhauser

Age: 35

Her job as president and chief financial officer of bankrupt Carolco Pictures is about to be terminated, but that hasn’t stopped Alice Neuhauser from getting her soon-to-be defunct employer the most bang for its buck.

The 35-year-old Iowa native recently raised eyebrows when she brokered the sale of Carolco’s half of the rights to the next “Terminator” movie to Andrew Vajna for $8 million far more than what most people thought the next sequel would fetch. (The other half of the series’ rights belong to producer James Cameron’s former wife, Gail Anne Hurd.)

“Alice, from the beginning, knew the rights were very valuable and had targeted a goal of obtaining a price in excess of $7 million,” said Howard Weg, a partner at the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which worked on the Carolco bankruptcy. “It was her sense of reading the situation and knowing the personalities that ultimately carried the day.”

More recently, Neuhauser made news by teaming up with developer Ron Flesch to form a new development company, Flesch & Neuhauser. The company is developing Manhattan Beach Studios an $80 million, 22.5-acre complex that will eventually contain 14 sound stages on the Rosecrans corridor in Manhattan Beach.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. has contracted to use five of the first 11 sound stages, which are expected to start coming on stream in June.

Neuhauser and her partner are developing the project on a for-fee basis for Shamrock Entertainment Investors II Inc., a unit of Burbank-based Shamrock Holdings Inc. that will own 100 percent of the project upon completion. Neuhauser and her partner have a profit participation in the project, but no equity.

Neuhauser’s current work is a far cry from her roots as daughter of a state senator and law professor. Under pressure from her parents, she began her career as a paralegal in Boston after graduating from college in that city.

But her real interest was Hollywood, and she came to Los Angeles in 1986.

After bouncing around from one secretarial job to the next, she ended up at Carolco and began her rapid climb to the company’s upper echelons.

“After a year at Carolco, they created a new position to handle their banking relationships,” Neuhauser said. “I got picked to head it. I kind of demanded it, because I was about to lose my mind working as a secretary.”

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